Nidus

I first became aware of Nidus when their CD showed up in the post.

I was working for Corpse Paint magazine back then, writing a monthly article called “Unblinking Eyes On” which focused on rising talent in the metal scene. I’d covered Oranssi Pazuzu, Winterfylleth, Midnight Odyssey and a bunch of others. It wasn’t unusual for me to receive promos and Soundcloud links and all sorts by email. Sending a CD through the post was pretty old school, though.

There was no return address, no note or letter, not even a band name. Just a sleek black sleeve with the disk inside. I guessed whoever sent it was going for a mysterious/viral marketing-type edge. It was a little daring and a little presumptuous, but it got my attention.

The very first heavy chord sent a tremor through my spine and turned my legs to jelly. A long, droning intro followed. It was somewhere between an earthquake and the distant rumble of a jet engine. When the song kicked in fully, I beheld oblivion.

Three hours later, the CD finished playing. I was shaking, sweating and filled up with numbing cold. I’d never heard anything like it. I’d never had such a potent physical reaction to a sound. It felt almost primal, as if parts of my brain were responding in a way that was purely instinctual, like animals do before a natural disaster.

Feverishly, I searched the sleeve for any marking, any symbol I could research. There was nothing. I checked the CD itself, ejecting it from the player. It felt cold in my shaking fingers.

It felt dead.

Clueless, I turned to the internet, but I quickly ran up against a brick wall when I realized I didn’t even know what search terms to use. I had to know more. I had to find the origins of this sound.

I listened to the CD eight times in a row. When the last playthrough stopped, I realized it had been a full day since I first hit play. I hadn’t eaten or drunk anything, but I was neither hungry nor thirsty. I was drenched in sweat, like I’d run a summer marathon. My eyes felt dry from staring into nothing.

I forced myself to get up, feed the cat, and make a coffee but that whole time I just wanted to hear it again, to feel that black hole pulling at me endlessly, to hear that noise pulverising my soul. I was hooked.

Frustrated with the lack of answers online, I called around my various contacts in the industry. At first, I got nowhere: no-one had heard of the black CD.

Then, Dane Hillard called me. I was surprised, since we were technically rivals on different magazines.

“James, hey. Look, this is going to sound weird, man,” he said. “But I got this CD through the post and-”

“Is it plain black? No logo or anything.”

“Yes! You got one too?”

“Yeah, and I was starting to feel like I was losing my mind. No-one’s heard of this. Any idea where it came from?”

“No clue. All I know is I can’t stop listening to it. Whoever these guys are, they’re doing something totally different.”

“I hear that. It’s so…”

“Old.”

“What?”

“You don’t think so? The sound just feels ancient. Primordial. I don’t know how else to put it. Maybe it’s just the language they’re singing in.”

“Singing?” I trailed off as I realized that, despite listening to the CD for a full twenty-four hours, I couldn’t remember a single word of the lyrics. I wasn’t even sure I’d heard lyrics.

I became suddenly aware that the line was quiet. “Dane?”

“Hm. Sorry, I must have zoned out there.”

“Are you listening to it now?”

“No. I want to, though. I can’t get enough of it.”

“Me either. I need to know where it came from.” I was surprised at my own emphasis on the word ‘need’.

“Well, I’ll keep my ear to the ground. You do the same.”

“Alright.”

“Got to go. Speak later.”

In my heart, I knew he’d ended the call to go back to the CD. I did the same. Three hours later, I still hadn’t heard a single word of the lyrics.

My phone beeped and brought me back to myself.

I hadn’t been asleep; I had just been absent in my own body. Now returned to my senses, I became aware of aches and pains. My eyes stung like they’d had sand blown in them. My throat was dry, and I ached like I hadn’t moved in days. Dimly, I heard my cat mewing and realized she must be hungry.

It was a struggle to move but I forced myself out of the chair and gulped down a glass of water. Thirst overcame me totally for several minutes and I drank until I was bloated and felt sick, then poured water over my face and into my eyes to try and soothe them.

Something stank, I realized. My apartment was suffused with this thick, cloying odor.

I found my cat’s body in the corner of the kitchen. I didn’t realize she was dead at first because her fur was moving. Then I realized it wasn’t breath, but maggots, writhing under her skin.

Impossible. It didn’t make sense. I’d just heard her call.

My phone; that was what had awoken me. Maybe I’d find some normalcy there. I stumbled to it on unsteady legs.

Dozens of missed calls and over a hundred text messages. My editor, my sister, my friends, all of them wondering why I’d dropped off the face of the Earth, why I wasn’t responding to them.

The most recent message was from Dane. It contained three words.

“Nidus. Oblivion Gate.”

Oblivion Gate was black metal festival in the UK. Hosted at an old castle in Wales, it was a haven for new and underground artists to strut their stuff amongst ancient ruins and dark crooked trees. A perfect venue, really. I’d been there a bunch of times, both before and during my time with Corpse Paint.

That meant the other word must be their name. Dane had found it.

Nidus.

I went to say it out loud but didn’t quite dare. Instead, I went online and bought an Oblivion Gate ticket. Just as I was preparing to put the CD on again, there was a knock at my door. I froze in a sudden inexplicable panic, as though I’d been caught doing something I shouldn’t. The knocking came again, louder and more insistent.

“James Berman!” A voice called through the wood. “This is the police! Can you open the door for us please?”

The panic spiked but I fought it with reason. You’ve done nothing wrong, I told myself. You’ve just been listening to music. Still, something coiled in my gut like snake as I opened the door.

There were two of them, both wearing serious expressions.

“You James Berman?” one asked.

“Yes.” It came out as a croak. When had I last used my vocal cords? On the phone with Dane? How long ago had that been?

“Do you know this man?” The photo they held up was of Dane.

My mouth flapped uselessly while the snake in my gut continued to writhe.

“Dane,” I managed to say.

“Can we come in?” asked the other, trying to peer past me into the apartment and wrinkling their nose at the smell.

“It’s not a good time,” I rasped. The effort of talking brought on a coughing fit and my eyes watered terribly. Even in my confused state I was pretty sure I didn’t want the police finding a decomposing cat in my kitchen. That was serial killer territory.

“What is that?” One nudged the other and pointed at the CD in my hands.

“I’m going to have to ask you to come with us. We have some questions we need you to answer. And we’ll need to take that.”

My first reaction was to flinch away and cradle the CD protectively but there was still a part of me thinking clearly enough to know that I had no choice. They stripped the CD from me, and I felt like a heavy black weight had been lifted from my chest, like my lungs could inflate fully for the first time in weeks. At the same time, I wanted it back desperately. I wanted to take that cool black slab of sound, pull it back onto myself, and be crushed by it.

The questioning took hours.

The room was cool and brightly lit. They brought me water and coffee. Bit by bit, my mind began to piece itself back together. I started to breathe again.

Dane was dead. They showed me the photos.

“We were hoping you could tell us what this means.” They spread out more pictures on the table. His apartment was a mess. Plates of mouldy food, thick layers of dust and abandoned clothing. On every surface, including his own skin, he’d written ‘Nidus’, over and over again.

“I…I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Are you sure?”

“Why would I know?”

“Because the same word is in the last text he sent. That text was to you.”

My head throbbed. I gripped the table to steady myself, even though I was sitting down. This didn’t make sense.

“When did this happen?” I gestured to the photos, not quite daring to look at them directly.

“Around a week ago.”

“That doesn’t make sense. The text only just came through. It…” I fished my phone out of my pocket. The date on the text was almost a week old. “I don’t understand.”

The text had awoken me from stupor only minutes before the police had arrived. Suddenly, I remembered the meek meow of my cat and the subsequent discovery of her rotting corpse. How much time had passed between the text and the knock at the door? Why couldn’t I remember?

“What is this?” They held up the CD, now inside a see-through plastic bag.

“It’s just a CD. We’re music journalists. We get them sometimes.”

They stared at me for a while, but I had nothing more to tell them. Why didn’t I warn them about the CD? About Nidus? Why didn’t I explain my experiences? I gave myself a dozen reasons: I hadn’t done anything wrong. It was just a CD. It would sound crazy.

The truth was, I didn’t want them to take Nidus away from me.

Once their questions were done, I returned to my apartment. The stench of my dead cat was still thick in the air, but I ignored it and went straight to my computer. I didn’t have the CD but now I had the name. Maybe I could find the music online somewhere. I felt weak, a dead leaf waiting to fall. I needed to find Nidus. I needed to feel that black weight of oblivion on me again.

All the usual forums and websites turned up no trace of any Nidus track, but I did see the name mentioned a few times. It was spreading, but no-one knew where they had come from or anything about them. They weren’t signed to any label, they hadn’t put out any press or merch. I gathered that there were likely less than one hundred of those black CDs out there in the world and they were a complete mystery.

The only sliver of information was that Nidus were rumoured to be making a debut live performance at Oblivion Gate. Everyone who had the CD bought a ticket. I sent a message to each of them asking for a rip of the CD, offering to pay for it even, but they all claimed the tracks couldn’t be ripped. There was no way to get the data from the disc.

Then I remembered what Dane had told me about the lyrics and I started asking for transcripts or samples or anything. Only one person responded. Their username was ‘Grinning_Cadaver’ and they sent only a single message, which read:

The words will come when you’re ready. They’ll come to everyone.

I didn’t pack anything for Oblivion Gate. The festival was three days long and two day’s travel away, but I just didn’t feel like I’d need it.

I didn’t even lock my front door when I left.

My dreams had been increasingly bloody since they took the CD from me. All night long I saw bodies pulverised, smashed apart and pulped by the sound. I saw charred and jagged bones falling into a sundered Earth and, above it all, a great devouring blackness in the sky.

In my waking hours I was twitchy, almost feverish. I couldn’t get a tremor out of my bones. I assaulted my ears with the hardest, most brutal Black Metal I could find but even relentless blast beats from favourites like Marduk couldn’t replicate the feeling I’d got from listening to Nidus.

I looked out of the window of the plane and saw pale reaping winds of death and didn’t know if I was awake or dreaming anymore.

The usual crowd were in attendance when I arrived at Oblivion Gate. The castle was lit by bright spotlights, casting its shadow up into the sky like a path to some dark heaven. Floodlights lit the stages; one in the woods, one in the ruins and one in the field just outside the crumbling walls. Fans stalked between the three, passing beneath ancient arches and over old battlegrounds. Great big boots, black leather, corpse paint and studs – everything I would expect. Despite this, there was something different about the atmosphere, a layer of something beneath the usual festival ambience. That primordial feeling Dane had mentioned.

I didn’t know who else was on the line-up. I hadn’t even checked. I camped out in front of the castle stage and waited. Others arrived, filtering in like spectres in a graveyard. They were just as pale. Their eyes were just as red. I knew them by instinct just as much as by perception. They were here for Nidus too. One of the cops that questioned me was there. He must have listened to the CD.

The air grew steadily more charged with anticipation, a storm before the first lightning strike. Other fans thrashed and jumped around, charged by the music as I used to be. The followers of Nidus only stood, waiting, drenched in sweat and craving the violence that would be done to us.

When Nidus finally took the stage there were no instruments.

They wore black robes with deep hoods, hiding all features. Heads bowed, like monks, they came forward, stepping out from behind one another to fill the space. It was hard to tell how many of them there were.

Silence fell and my heart pounded painfully.

The music began and for a moment I too caught up in that awful euphoria to wonder where it was coming from. Then I came to realise, with horror and fascination, that the sound wasn’t produced by instruments at all. Whatever was under those hoods, it was singing. The music was their voices, terrible, beautiful and alien.

Finally, crying tears of blood from dried out eyes, I heard and understood the lyrics.

Nidus, the nest of oblivion.

Nidus, a wound in reality that spread into every soul that heard it.

Nidus, an infection carried on the voices of incomprehensible beings.

We fell to our knees as the sound destroyed us, arms raised in worship even as the flesh was blasted from our bones.

I smiled wide as the lips were ripped from my face and understood that this was the end of all things.